பிரவாகம்

Thanks : Frozen thoughts Magazine, May 2009 issue
Author : Lata Krishnaswamy

I was in Delhi to attend a three-day seminar about the techniques of screenwriting conducted by a Hollywood professional. As soon as the last session on the third day was over, I walked up to the lecturer, thanked him and left the place immediately to catch my flight back to Chennai. I reached the airport early, almost an hour before the scheduled time for reporting. I checked in and then strolled into the bookstore, got myself a book, went through security check and finally settled myself nicely in a corner. The book in my hand was "When the shoe fits" by Osho, a revolutionary contributor to the science of inner transformation. For the first few minutes I was simply reading the text. Nothing went in. Soon I was engrossed, not only with the book but also with the author. At the end of one of the chapters I checked my watch and realized only five minutes was left for the flight take off.

Wondering why they did not announce boarding yet, I moved from one gate to another and there at the last gate the airline staff almost pounced on me, "Ms.Lata!" and I nodded my head. "Where have you been? The flight just took off." I couldn't believe this. Completely taken aback I said, "I have been sitting right here all along. I checked in about an hour ago. There was no announcement of boarding at all." I realized after a few seconds that there was no point arguing with him. Luckily he had withheld my baggage from being loaded. He then took pity on the lady traveling alone and proved helpful. He walked me to the counter and marked my ticket for "refund". Apparently the air traffic was too heavy that evening, so the boarding was announced once (which I must have missed) and they did not have time to announce the name of the passenger who had checked in, but did not board the flight.

I made a call to my dad in Chennai and like anyone would be, he was very upset and said "I don't want you to get back into the city alone in the night. You may not even get a room. So get a ticket in the next flight and come right away." There was another flight by another airline in fifteen minutes time. I kept telling myself all along. "I have to get back tonight, if not for my sake, at least to save dad of a sleepless night." The man at the counter said, "Sorry ma'm the flight's full." As I was cursing myself for being so foolish and stood there blank for a few seconds - thinking what to do, the man said, "Hey wait someone has just canceled. I have a seat for you, but you got to hurry up. They are already boarding." Thanks to the credit cards. I bought the ticket and ran in. Ironically that ticket was cheaper than the one I had bought earlier. So I went back home and promptly told my dad, "See, I actually saved some money."

Thinking back, I could have blamed the airport authorities for the chaos, blamed the airline for not giving enough time, blamed the system as there were no displays, blamed fate for playing a trick on me, but I knew the minute he told me, "The flight had left" that I was to be blamed. I have been often referred to as absentminded, but this incident topped it all. "When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten..." was the crux of the first few chapters in the book that took my mind away from the airport. How true! Although the incident jolted me, I did see the positive side of it, focussed on solving the issue and bailing myself out of that situation, instead of buckling down.

Situations that happen in your life don't happen to show you that you are a failure in life. They happen to show you what you believe in. I believed I was absentminded and an incident occurred to prove me right. If you don't prefer to be absentminded, you can change yourself by changing your beliefs. Your physical reality is actually your feedback mechanism. With every experience, you are given an opportunity to become aware of your belief systems. The beauty about the design is that at every given moment you have the opportunity to not only know precisely what your strongest belief is, because your strongest belief always manifests in your psychological reality. But it also gives you the opportunity to change it. Life would be very simple if only we are transparent to ourselves and allow our definitions to life to be clear unto ourselves.

Every circumstances is fundamentally neutral, devoid of any meaning. No circumstance has any built-in meaning. It is you who assign a meaning to them. You tend to believe when a circumstance occurs, the meaning you automatically perceive is the meaning that inherently comes with it - but it doesn't! The situation as such is neutral. The meaning you assign to the neutral situation is absolutely, totally your meaning and this is what determines the effect you get out of it. Your imagination is the template for all the probable realities you could manifest. Your emotions determine which of those templates will be brought into manifestation. If you have positive emotions like excitement, joy, love and bliss, you activate the positive templates. If you have fear, doubt, jealousy, guilt, judgments, you activate the negative templates.

When your focus is continuously on the world, the world gets the reigns of your life and becomes all powerful and you become dependent on the world around. Whereas when your energies are focused on your improvement rather than trying to improve the world, it becomes a journey of self discovery. Very often the challenge is not in knowing, but in doing what you already knew. When this journey of self discovery can also be combined with an adventure in self-empowerment, we begin to actually see how much of our physical reality has actually been created by us. With that dawns a new confidence that indeed you are the artiste who holds the template to paint your life.